“It was while I was engaged in this work that Christ was brought to my soul for the first time in my life with a sweetness and beauty, with a vividness and glory, that for the time transformed the heavens and the earth to my eyes. I had a conception of the depths of the nature of the Divine Being that made metaphysical doctrines and philosophical formulas more repugnant to me than they had ever been before, and I entered into a vow and covenant that if I were permitted to preach I would know nothing but Christ and Him crucified among His people. I took my horse and saddle-bags and traversed the wilderness of Indiana, keeping that view in my mind. For eight or ten years I labored for the poor and needy, in cabins, in camp-meetings, through woods, up and down, sometimes riding two days to meet my appointments. I had no books but my Bible, and I went from one to the other—from the Bible to men, and from men to the Bible. When a case came up I said to myself: ‘What will reach that case?’ and I looked through the Acts of the Apostles to see how they reached such cases. I hunted the Bible through in order to get at the right way. So I worked on, and at last the habit was formed in my mind of studying men, their dispositions, their wants, their peculiarities; and then I worked with reference to curing them, not constructing a system, but striving to produce righteousness in the individual and in communities.” It is said that in his preaching he often went double-loaded. He would go to church with a sermon specially prepared for some person whom he greatly desired to reach. If, however, he was not present, he would preach a more general sermon. But when, on some other occasion, he found, on entering church, that the object of his solicitude was present, he would lay aside the sermon prepared for that day and preach the special one. It often occasioned no little surprise in the mind of the subject that Mr. Beecher should have _happened_ that day to preach a sermon so exactly fitted to his case. Although he had the strongest feelings of love and kindliness toward mankind, both in the abstract and the concrete, yet he never hesitated to lash with stinging words any who took advantage of their strength to abuse another’s weakness. And in such a case nothing could induce him to back down or withdraw from the attack, unless he could be satisfied that he had been mistaken in his facts. One noticeable incident of the kind occurred during his ministry in Indianapolis, as narrated by Mrs. Beecher: A man in the city hotel, and not a little feared because of his brutality, had done something more brutal than usual, and, the facts coming to Mr. Beecher’s knowledge, in his sermon on the following Sunday he expressed in no gentle terms his abhorrence of the act, and in very strong language rebuked the man. Many of his listeners were alarmed lest the man would, when he heard of the sermon, do Mr. Beecher some injury.